1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications services. More particularly, the present invention relates to capabilities that enhance substantially the value and usefulness of various messaging paradigms including, inter alia, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), etc.
2. Background of the Invention
As the ‘wireless revolution’ continues to march forward the importance to a Mobile Subscriber (MS)—for example a user of a Wireless Device (WD) such as a cellular telephone, a BLACKBERRY, a Palm Pilot, etc. that is serviced by a Wireless Carrier (WC)—of their WD grows substantially.
One consequence of such a growing importance is the resulting ubiquitous nature of WDs—i.e., MSs carry them at almost all times and use them for an ever-increasing range of activities.
Coincident with the expanding presence of WDs has been the explosive growth of messaging—a steady annual increase, year over year, in the number of (SMS, MMS, etc.) messages that have been exchanged by and between WDs. That steady increase shows no sign of abating. For example, as reported by the industry group CTIA (see ctia.org on the World Wide Web [WWW]) in the U.S. there were over 158 billion SMS messages sent during 2006 (representing a 95% increase over 2005) and there were over 2.7 billion MMS messages sent during 2006 (representing a 100% increase over 2005).
Additionally, MSs would like to be able to use their WDs to engage in and complete increasingly more complicated activities (beyond, for example, exchanging simple messages with their friends, receiving one-way news/weather/financial/etc. notifications, etc.). Many of those activities require a coordinated exchange of multiple SMS, MMS, etc. messages—i.e., a (SMS, MMS, etc.) message-based conversation with possibly inter alia the maintenance or preservation of state, context, etc. across (i.e., during) the message exchanges. As just one illustrative example:
1) Mary, a hypothetical MS, might receive on her WD a message from one of her financial institutions informing her that one of her accounts has become overdrawn and asking her if she wishes to transfer money to the overdrawn account.
2) Mary might reply with ‘Yes.’
3) Mary might receive a message from the financial institution listing her other accounts, their available balances, and asking her from which account she wishes to transfer the funds.
4) Mary might reply with ‘2’ (indicating the second of the listed accounts).
5) Mary might receive a message from the financial institution asking her how much money she wishes to transfer.
6) Mary might reply with ‘100’ (indicating $100).
7) Mary might receive a confirmation message from the financial institution.
The specific example that was described above is illustrative only and it will be readily apparent to one of ordinary skill in the relevant art that numerous other examples are easily possible and indeed are fully within the scope of the present invention.
Previous technologies (including for example monolithic systems such as mainframe computers and distributed systems such as client-server environments and n-tier environments) have addressed the maintenance or preservation of state, context, etc. across (i.e., during) individual exchanges through techniques such as session identifiers, Uniform Resource Locator (URL) rewriting, cookies, etc. However basic WD-based messaging paradigms such as SMS and MMS offer no such capabilities.
Given (1) the ubiquitous nature of WDs, (2) the popularity of (SMS, MMS, etc.) messaging, and (3) the need for MSs to use their WDs to engage in and complete increasingly more complicated activities, it would be desirable to enhance basic WD-based messaging through the innovatory support of (SMS, MMS, etc.) message-based conversations.
Aspects of the present invention facilitate such (SMS, MMS, etc.) message-based conversations in new, creative, and unconventional ways and address various of the not insubstantial challenges that are associated with same.